About this role
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About the Role
We are looking for an experienced Upwork Channel Manager to take full ownership of our Upwork operation - from bidding and profile management to analytics, team leadership, and channel development. You will run one of our most important lead generation channels end-to-end, managing bids across multiple profiles and leading a team of lead generators across shifts. This is a senior operator role.
You will set the strategy, execute the day-to-day, and be held accountable for real numbers - replies, qualified calls, SQLs, and closed deals. What You Will Own Bidding & Proposal Strategy - Run the bidding operation end-to-end: bids per month across multiple profiles, with clear quality standards and no drops in view rates. Manage Connect spending: keep cost per SQL in healthy ranges and reconcile refunds from lost/closed jobs. - Own scanner configuration: weekly optimization of underperforming scanners, applying small iterative changes - cover letter variants, profile selection, smart boosting - and scaling what works. - Write and test cover letters: continuous A/B testing of length, opening lines, trust signals, portfolio anchors, and niche framing.
Profile & Channel Development - Optimize profiles for visibility and conversion: titles, descriptions, portfolios, keywords, and positioning. Align every profile with our current propositions, including AI-assisted development. - Launch and onboard new profiles: when the channel can absorb them, plan, launch, and season new profiles to keep the operation scaling. Analytics & Reporting - Track the full funnel weekly: bids → views → replies → calls → SQLs → deals, by profile, by scanner, by day-of-week, by bidder. - Investigate bottlenecks: the reply-to-call conversion is the current priority.
Pull the conversation data, find the patterns, test fixes, report on results. Team Leadership - Manage the lead generation team (currently 2 - 3 people across shifts): set KPIs, run 1:1s, review performance, hire, onboard, and - when needed - make the hard calls on underperformers. - Build processes that scale: standardize how bids are recorded, how SQLs are qualified, how data is logged. The team needs to be measurable, not dependent on any one heroic performer.
Cross-functional Collaboration - Work with Sales: hand off SQLs cleanly to the team running qualification calls. - Work with Analytics: partner on dashboards, data exports, and attribution. your profile What You Bring Must-Haves - 3+ years of hands-on Upwork experience, ideally running a bidding operation for an agency or service business of $10m and more. - Proven track record of improving funnel conversion - not just running volume. You can point to specific numbers you moved. - Strong analytical skills: fluent in spreadsheets, comfortable modeling unit economics (cost per SQL, LTV, CAC), able to read funnel data and form real hypotheses. - Experience managing a lead gen or BDR-style team: hiring, onboarding, performance management, compensation design. - Deep familiarity with Upwork's mechanics: Connects, boosting, algorithm changes, profile optimization, client filtering, scanner/automation tools - Experience bidding across multiple verticals - software development, full-stack, healthcare, logistics, CRM, fintech, or similar. - Excellent written English. You will be writing and editing cover letters, proposals, and profile copy. - Process discipline.
You document what you do, you record data consistently, and you expect the same from your team. - Judgment. You know when to enforce process and when to let a high performer operate their own way. Nice-to-Haves - Experience with AI-assisted proposal generation - Familiarity with LinkedIn / Email outbound - Background in positioning software development agencies or AI-assisted development services. - Experience working with distributed teams across Eastern Europe and other time zones.
Apply directly on RemoteJobs.org: https://remotejobs.org/remote-jobs/upwork-channel-manager-indexdev-himala